I’ve been watching the IPHONE hype now for a year. There is an AWESOME lesson to be learned here that if you apply it to your business will boost your sales. Most companies sell to you the things you want in your life –called the pleasure principle. Now most can do well and even do great if they present it better than everyone else or introduce the product to market. The truely bad side of this type of marketing and selling is that once somebody sees money being made everybody seems to jump into the mix. Of course then the market gets drained until the next great thing comes….

There are many great products many you don’t even think of that are 5 to 100x better than pleasure or a want based product. It’s a product designed, marketed and sold to take away what you don’t want. I like to call it the pain point product which is created to eliminate your negative experiences with another product. Pain point products sell faster, easier and the money you can make on this product IS NEVER priced according to competition but rather how much is some body willing to pay to alleviate the pain. IF your product takes pain away and replaces it with pleasure you have the GOLDEN TICKET in business. So when looking at your product instead of thinking what does this do for my customer? Think the opposite –what does may customer not like that without my product they would have ? or what problem does my product solve?

So where does the Iphone come into all of this you ask? It all started when Mr Jobs got into a completely crazy idea the make the worlds greatest cellphone. The problem Apple knew absolutely nothing about the industry and had never created any cell phone let alone attempt to create the best ever with the iphone.

So instead of going after them and trying to “one up them” he asked himself one of the most powerful questions ever that nobody was bothering to ask. What are all the things that people DON’T like about mobile phones? Those are the things the industry really needs to reinvent itself as you will.

So he found people current pain points and worked on designing a product from what they didn’t want. Then create solutions that literally have other carriers terrified (like exposing a bad secret). The cellphone industry forces users to a way of using the phone that they control and is based on that companys way(ex motorola and nokia may do the same things but the way the menu is set up is unique to each company) . They traded of ease of use for technology and as they added more features phone became HARDER to use. Of course they didn’t care they figured if we continue to add more stuff people will buy it and its work for the last 15 years.

Now is the time people need to be heard.

So the iphone was created. It will be wildly successful even at $500 or $600 because people ARE willing to pay to have a phone that is the intuitive and easy to use. Then after he created valued solutions then he ONLY then he looked at putting things in it that nobody had ever seen.

The reason why the iphone will change your life is that finally manufacturers are looking at the TOTAL experience of the phone instead of just the features of the phone. So even if you never buy a iphone the next phone you do buy will probrably be influenced by the massive impact that Steve Jobs has done. Thank you Apple for yet another product in the iphone that make my life easier and remarkably better.

If you look at my tab called out of the box you’ll understand why if you learn to think in ways others don’t you too can create incredible products and make lots of money.

This about this seriously. How much would it change your business and finacial goals? Do you have say 3000 customers and profits on each sale would be $10 equaling $30,000 in pure profit. That ‘s a brand new car or a big chunk of a child’s education fund. I really want you as a business owner to really think about your specfic situation. Dream about what you would do if it where true? This is pure profit it goes direct to you there are no expenses. I’m not being pollyana or just kidding I mean this. I will help you make it happen.

It is not only possible it is probrable. I have helped serveral business owners with this one concept and it has DRASTICALLY changed the business literally overnight once they understand the magnitude of it. What I mean by that is most business owners look and focus on the ONE so they don’t get it, think its stupid and never try it.It usually not until the competition comes along and crushes them with it that they understand. Then its too late the damage has been done. So i’ve divided it up to hopefully get more people to understand it.

What todays exercise is doing is placing your focus on the EVERY instead of the ONE. If you want to make unbelievable amounts of money in your business you are going to need to change your mind. why? What you are currently thinking about anything in your life has gotten you to this point it can’t get you anymore or else you would already have it. That being said it is my job to get you to see think in a much larger perspective then you are used to. What do Tiger Woods, Steve Jobs and and Martin Luther King have in common? They all have perspectives that are so large we wouldn’t be able to grasp them. I can garantee that one of the three has impacted your life because of that perspective.

My goal is grow your perspective from business owner to market leader or innovator. So dream about every single person your business have every sold to. Then is the next lesson I show exactly how you will accomplish this goal. Good luck.

In tribute to father’s day which is very hard for me this year. I want to send this idea that i’m sure my dad is proud of. My father was in advertising his whole life and he taught me a crucial truth in marketing to people. Figure out the person your selling to. Then find the trigger that will get them to act.

So the trigger is father’s day and you create a promotion that includes the fathers and/or the sons of your clients. Make it an offer that may be simple but they can’t refuse. let me give you one example for the next 3 days(fri, sat, sun) Get in touch with those prospects that are considering you. Tell them that for this weekend you have a special for them (ex$$$off or financing) for the holiday BUT in addition you know how important family is to them your going to give them a $50 gift certificate to the restaurant of their choice on Sun. Now if you make it a truely SINCERE (I REALLY mean it) gesture they will have no choice but to say YES to the purchase now.Because it will be obvious to them that you are putting their needs above just a sale. You’ll be creating a Massive connection for future interactions (the folllow up call on monday or tuesday will absolutely make you melt). now if your are NOT completely genuine in this they will see through it and never want to do business with you. This is one of the most powerful ways to build everything in your business at once (loyalty, sales,showing similar values, add on sales–I could go on forever with the benefits of what happens when you do this right) Now I just gave you one idea but create your own or email me I create on specifically for your business (for FREE ). You can do this with holidays that have an emotional impact with people in general–DON’T overdo it.

I only have one request on Sunday take your father and or sons out. Take 5 secs at your meal and be grateful for that moment and thankful for the gifts they have given you.

Did you know that over 70% of all business put their customers on hold.

Now be honest with yourself its the only way to make things better and don’t minimize it.

The way to make sure you don’t lose customers out of bored or frustration of being on hold is simple. Keep them entertained so they forget they you are essentially wasting their time with this useless activity.The worse things is silence give them time to think about how aggitated they are. The best thing is LAUGHTER do a joke reel (clean) or funny commercials something that will make teir mood better after your done ignoring them(that’s how they feel even though that’s probrably not what you were doing) . So go get creative.

These are the ways people probrably don’t consider until its to late. I love sharing about things in business that always work. However I am constantly reminded by bad business owners what you should NEVER do unless you want to go broke, lose customers or just plummet in general. This lesson is just important if not more than what works. So avoid these land mines at all costs only takes one to do the work and the more you do the faster it’ll ruin you.

1.Hire selfish employees(people that only care about themselves hurt everybody around them and are probrably sabatoging your business. Either they are stealing or just being hard to work with)
2.Holding on people who have negative attitudes (yes they are affecting EVERYBODY like a disease and costing you a ton–fire them to find out how much)

3.Treating any customers or employees rudely(once you offend somebody they’ll never want to work with you but they will really work against you)

4.Stop caring about your business(Believing that it will take care of itself it the biggest line of @##$ EVER.)

5.Don’t properly acknowledge customers (if they feel like you don’t care they are there , they won’t be there long)

6.Stop listening to your customers (ex people who return your product and tell you why it sucks. You should always be learning how to make it better and people complaining actually is helping you. So stop trying to defend yourself and listen especially if its something you don’t want to hear it just may save you)

7.Charging to much money for what you do or sell(if the customer feels that you are ripping them off by not providing enough value they will stop doing business then as a bonus they tell all their friends to not do business with you either-2 points)

8.Complaining about your competition to anybody(this only shows the listener that you are either inconsiderate or clueless the two things most people don’t want to be associated with. )

9.Creating policies that make it to hard for your customers to do business with you(ex return policys that don”t give the customer back what they want– store credit instead of cash)

10. Acting like you better then everybody else (you may be the best in the business but if you flaunt it your making others feel like they aren’t important and nobody deserves tho feel that way)

Most owners and sales people believe that the number one reason why people don’t buy is price. WRONG. Sure thats what the customer tells you but they usually are saying that to buy themselves one thing–Time which creates space enough to make the decision on their terms and for their reasons. So how do I know i’ve asked customers after I’ve lost the sale. So my pain and loss will help you to see the truth.

—They forgot about me when they made the decision(because I didn’t follow up in time)

—-The decisions time table got pushed up (what was a im just looking got turned in a need it NOW sooner than one of us realized)

<>–I found a better product somewhere else(either they really did or I didn’t do my job)

<>—My wife/husband didn’t feel like coming back in so we got it where they went(yes this actually happens ALOT in other words you where selling to the wrong person)

–they decided they don’t need it(either they’ll do without or they have decided to put the decision off indefinitely)

Now I will add to this list over time. If your in sales in any way shape or form here is a great motivating fact in look at lost opportunities “People always buy at the last place they shop” That is a very simple truth that was extremely hard for me to grasp until I created a great question to turn it around. Ask yourself what am I doing to make sure i’m that last place my customers shop at?

Grab your existing customer list(you better have one) and do one time sale blast. Make it only for a very limited time and only for the people who receive the offer. Make these participants feel special (ex by telling them only specific people where selected to receive this offer and they are one of the chosen few). Figure out the product that they would value most and then give them a price they know they won’t beat anytime or anywhere. The idea is to take a loss on the product or breakeven to do 1 of 3 things and if you can do more your really going to be happy.

First is the add on sale either from the customer or from your suggestion. Second is to build customer confidence for a future purchases(believing you have the best price of anybody of bringing in friends to shop with them). Or third getting them to just purchase more or upgrade to the better model. There are more benefits that will increase your business all the way around.

The way to see how well you do is to employ tracking for the list and talk to your customers as they come in. Ask them how did they find out about you. Also track you overall sales year over year and size of the average sale. The more specific tracking you can do the better because you be able to figure how to make it more powerful next time.

My warning is this DON’T overuse this technique it will completely back fire on you. So the more planing you can do the better it will pay off for you. Now go make some money!!